The BBC tw**ed this yesterday, and you can see a longer video at this site. They estimate the flock contained 70,000 birds.
A ballet of the skies over Oxfordshire https://t.co/mwHT72PkBe pic.twitter.com/WaWgTyf9Vo
— BBC News England (@BBCEngland) February 10, 2016
This appears to have happened two days ago. I hope it’s not a portent for my visit.
Please do not stand under it with your mouth open.
And always know where your towel is!
If underneath a murmuration like that, it’d be towel-over-the-head time. Practicing for duelling the Ravenous Bug-Blatter Beast of Traal.
Yoiks! The gravity waves have arrived!
I think that wins the Internets for this week! 🙂
cr
Spectacular and mesmerizing! We have many starlings in Geneva but nowhere near such numbers, so we don’t get murmurations. On the other hand, in the summer, in late afternoon when the sun is fairly low in the west, they will fly in largish groups, and the sun catches their bellies and the under side of their wings as they turn. Their feathers are iridescent and so we see impressive but very fleeting flashes of gold – quite beautiful!
I can’t get enough of these sky ballets – they fill me with wonder.
I love them!
I saw something like this, on a much smaller scale, a few weeks ago. Maybe 50 or a hundred birds circling one particular house. I took a video, but by the time I got my phone out, the swarm was not as impressive as it had been when I first saw it, so I didn’t save the video.
One of the most spectacular murmurations I’ve ever seen! Another name for the phenomenon could be mesmerations.
So often it looked like breakers crashing into shore.
Budgies are better, especially the argon-laser effect when thousands of them turn simultaneously and flash green sunlight into your eyes.
Whoa, thanks for the links! I knew they flocked but had no idea they did so in such numbers.
Hard to believe the hawks would get enough energy from eating one budgie to make up for that they expend to catch it!